Bumper Crop (15 page)

"Infrared lights, Pistol Pete, that's what I'm seeing."

"Have . . . have we got the Black Bird here?"

Tramp, listening to the CB, felt that pulling-out-of-a-dive sensation again. He started to reach for his mike, tell them he was their back door, but he clenched the wheel harder instead. No. He was going to stay clear of this. What could a lone car—if in fact it was a car—do to a convoy of big trucks anyway?

The CB chattered.

"This is Sloppy Joe. Those lights are moving up fast."

"The Black Bird?" asked Pistol Pete.

"Believe we got a big positive on that."

"What can he do to a convoy of trucks anyway," said another trucker.

My sentiments exactly
, thought Tramp.

"
Pick you off one by one
," came a voice made of smoke and hot gravel.

"What, back door?"

"Not me, Pistol Pete."

"Who? Bear Britches? Slipped Disk? Merry—"

"
None of them. It's me, the Black Bird
."

"This is Sloppy Joe. It's the Black Bird, all right. Closing on my tail, pulling alongside."

"Watch
yerself
!"

"I can see it now . . . running alongside . . . I can make out some slash marks—"

"
Confirmed kills
," said the Pilot. "
If I were an artist, I'd paint little trucks
."

"Back door, back door! This is Pistol Pete. Come in."

"Sloppy Joe here . . . There's a man with a gun in the sunroof."

"Run him off the road, Sloppy Joe! Ram him!"

Tramp, his window down, cool breeze blowing against his face, heard three quick, flat snaps. Over the whine of the wind and the roar of the engine, they sounded not unlike the rifle fire he had heard over the wind and the rotor blades of his copter in Nam. And he thought he had seen the muzzle blast of at least one of those shots. Certainly he had seen something light up the night.

"I'm hit! Hit!" Sloppy Joe said.

"What's happening? Come back, Sloppy Joe. This is Pistol Pete. What's happening?"

"Hit . . . can't keep on the road."

"Shut down!"

Tramp saw an arc of flame fly high and wide from the dark T-bird—which looked like little more than an elongated shadow racing along the highway—and strike Sloppy Joe's truck. The fire boomed suddenly, licked the length of the truck, blossomed in the wind.
A Molotov
, thought Tramp.

Tramp pulled over, tried to gear down. Cold sweat popped on his face like measles, his hands shook on the wheel.

Sloppy Joe's Mack had become a quivering, red flower of flame. It whipped its tail, jackknifed and flipped, rolled like a toy truck across the concrete highway divider. When it stopped rolling, it was wrapped in fire and black smoke, had transformed from glass and metal to heat and wreckage.

The Bird moved on, slicing through the smoke, avoiding debris, blending with the night like a dark ghost.

As Tramp passed the wrecked truck he glimpsed something moving in the cab, a blackened, writhing thing that had once been human. But it moved only for an instant and was still.

Almost in a whisper, came: "This is Bear Britches. I'm the back door now. Sloppy Joe's in flames . . . Gone . . ."

T
hose flames, that burnt-to-a-crisp body, sent Tramp back in time, back to Davy
Cluey
that hot-as-hell afternoon in Nam. Back to when God gave Tramp his personal demon.

They had been returning from a routine support mission, staying high enough to avoid small arms fire. Their rockets and most of their M-60 ammo were used up. The two choppers were scurrying back to base when they picked up the urgent call. The battered remains of a platoon were pinned down on a small hill off Highway One. If the stragglers didn't get a dust-off in a hurry, the Cong were going to dust them off for good.

He and Davy had turned back to aid the platoon, and soon they were twisting and turning in the air like great dragonflies performing a sky ballet. The
Cong's
fire buzzed around them.

Davy sat down first and the stranded Marines rushed the copter. That's when the Cong hit.

Why they hadn't waited until he too was on the ground he'd never know. Perhaps the sight of all those Marines—far too many to cram into the already heavily manned copter—was just too tempting for patience. The Cong sent a stream of liquid fire rolling lazily out of the jungle, and it had entered Davy's whirling rotors. When it hit the blades it suddenly transformed into a spinning parasol of flames.

That was his last sight of the copter and Davy. He had lifted upward and flown away. To this day, the image of that machine being showered by flames came back to him in vivid detail. Sometimes it seemed he was no longer driving on the highway, but flying in Nam, the rhythmic beat of the tires rolling over tar strips in the highway would pick up tempo until they became the twisting chopper blades, and soon, out beyond the windshield, the highway would fade and the cement would become the lush jungles of Nam.

Sometimes, the feeling was so intense he'd have to pull over until it passed.

A CB voice tossed Nam out of Tramp's head.

"This is Bear Britches. The Bird is moving in on me."

"Pistol Pete here. Get away, get away."

"He's alongside me now. Can't shake him. Something sticking out of a hole in the trunk—a rifle barrel!"

A shot could be heard clearly over the open airwaves, then the communications button was released and there was silence. Ahead of him Tramp could see the convoy and he could see the eighteen wheeler that was its back door. The truck suddenly swerved, as if to ram the Black Bird, but Tramp saw a red burst leap from the Bird's trunk, and instantly the eighteen wheeler was swerving back, losing control. It crossed the meridian, whipping its rear end like a crocodile's tail, plowed through a barbwire fence and smacked a row of pine trees with a sound like a thunderclap. The cab smashed up flat as a pancake. Tramp knew no one could have lived through that. And now ahead of him, Tramp saw another Molotov flipping through the air, and in an instant, another truck was out of commission, wearing flames and flipping in a frenzy along the side of the road. Tramp's last memory of the blazing truck was its tires, burning brightly, spinning wildly around and around like little inflamed Ferris wheels.

"Closing on me," came a trucker's voice. "The sonofabitch is closing on me. Help me! God, someone help me here."

Tramp remembered a similar communication from Davy that day in Nam; the day he had lifted up to the sky and flown his bird away and left Davy there beneath that parasol of fire.

Excited chatter sounded over the airwaves as the truckers tried to summon the highway boys, tried to call for help.

Tramp saw a sign for a farm road exit, half a mile away. The stones settled in his gut again, his hands filmed with sweat. It was like that day in Nam, when he had the choice to turn back and help or run like hell.

No trucks took the exit. Perhaps their speed was up too much to attempt it. But he was well back of them and the Bird. What reason did he have to close in on the Bird? What could he do? As it was, the Bird could see his lights now and they might pop a shot at him any second.

Tramp swallowed. It was him or them.

He slowed, took the exit at fifty, which was almost too fast, and the relief that first washed over him turned sour less than a second later. He felt just like he had that day in Nam when he had lifted up and away, saved himself from Death at the expense of Davy.

"R
eport!" said the Pilot.

Through the headphones came
Micky's
guttural whine. "Tail gunner reporting, sir. Three of the enemy rubbed out, sir."

"Confirmed," came the voice of the turret gunner. "I have visual confirmation on tail gunner's report. Enemy formation affecting evasive maneuvers. Have sighted two more sets of enemy lights approaching on the port quarter. Request permission to break off engagement with forward enemy formation and execute strafing attack on approaching formation."

"Permission granted," said the Pilot. "Sparks! Report State Escort whereabouts."

"Catching signals of approaching State Escorts, sir. ETA three minutes."

"Number of Escorts?"

"Large squadron, sir."

"Pilot to flight crew. Change in orders. Strafe forward formation, to prepare to peel off at next exit."

The Bird swooped down on the forward truck, the turret gun slamming blast after blast into the semi's tires. The truck was suddenly riding on the rims. Steel hit concrete and sparks popped skyward like overheated fireflies.

The Bird moved around the truck just as it lost control and went through a low guardrail fence and down into a deep ditch.

Black smoke boiled up from the Black Bird's tires, mixed with the night. A moment later the sleek car was running alongside another truck. The turret gunner's weapon barked like a nervous dog, kept barking as it sped past the trucks and made its way to the lead semi. The turret gunner barked a few more shots as they whipped in front of the truck, and the tail gunner put twenty fast rounds through the windshield. Even as the driver slumped over the semi's wheel and the truck went barreling driverless down the highway, the Bird lost sight of it and took a right exit, and like a missile, was gone.

B
lack against black, the Bird soared, and inside the death machine the Pilot, with the internal vision of his brain, turned the concrete before him into a memory:

Once he had been whole, a tall, young man with a firm body and a head full of Technicolor dreams. The same had been true of his comrades. There had been a time when these dreams had been guiding lights. They had wanted to fly, had been like birds in the nest longing for the time when they would try their wings; thinking of that time, living for that time when they would soar in silver arrows against a fine blue sky, or climb high up to the face of the moon.

Each of them had been in the Civil Air Patrol. Each of them had hours of air time, and each of them had plans for the Air Force. And these plans had carried them through many a day and through many a hard exam and they had talked these plans until they felt they were merely reciting facts from a future they had visited.

But then there was the semi and that very dark night.

The four of them had been returning from Barksdale Air Force Base. They had made a deal with the recruiter to keep them together throughout training, and their spirits were high.

And the driver who came out of the darkness, away from the honky-tonk row known as Hell's Half Mile, had been full of spirits too.

There had been no lights, just a sudden looming darkness that turned into a White Freight Liner crossing the middle of the highway; a stupid, metallic whale slapdash in the center of their path.

The night screamed with an explosion of flesh, metal, glass, and chrome. Black tire smoke boiled to the heavens and down from the heavens came a rain of sharp, hot things that engulfed the four; and he, the one now called the Pilot, awoke to whiteness. White everywhere, and it did not remind him of cleanliness, this whiteness. No. It was empty, this whiteness, empty like the ever-hungry belly of time; and people floated by him in white, not angel-white, but wraith-white; and the pain came to live with him and it called his body home.

When enough of the pain had passed and he was fully aware, he found a monster one morning in the mirror. A one-legged thing with a face and body like melted plastic. But the eyes. Those sharp hawk eyes, that had anticipated seeing the world from the clouds, were as fine as ever; little green gems that gleamed from an over-cooked meat rind.

And the others:

Sparks had lost his left arm and half his head was metal. He had been castrated by jagged steel. Made sad jokes about being the only man who could keep his balls in a plastic bag beside his bed.

Ted had metal clamps on his legs and a metal jaw. His scalp had been peeled back like an orange. Skin grafts hadn't worked. Too burned. From now on, across his head—like some sort of toothless mouth—would be a constantly open wound behind which a smooth, white skull would gleam.

Micky
was the worst. Legs fried off. One eye cooked to boiled egg consistency—a six-minute egg. Face like an exploding sore. Throat and vocal cords nearly gone. His best sound was a high, piercing whine.

Alone they were fragments of humanity. Puzzle parts of a horrid whole.

Out of this vengeance grew.

They took an old abandoned silo on Spark's farm—inherited years back when his father had died—fixed it up to suit their needs; had the work done and used Spark's money.

They also pooled their accounts, and with the proper help, they had elevators built into the old gutted silo. Had telescopes installed. Radios. And later they bought maps and guns. Lots of guns. They bought explosives and made super
Molotovs
of fuel and plastic explosives. Bad business.

And the peculiar talents that had been theirs individually became a singular thing that built gadgets and got things done. So before long, the Pilot, stomping around on his metallic leg, looking like a run-through-the-wringer Ahab, became their boss. They cut
Micky's
T-Bird down and
rerigged
it, rebuilt it as a war machine. And they began to kill. Trucks died on the highway, became skeletons, black charred frames. And the marks on the sides of the Black Bird grew and grew as they went about their stalks . . .